


Prescriber

by linguamortua



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety Disorder, M/M, Shower Sex, Stress Relief, Water Sex, this is clearly medical malpractice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:00:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26130796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: Ned sees a friend-of-a-friend about work stress.
Relationships: Dr Stephen S. Stanley/Lt. Edward Little
Comments: 16
Kudos: 50
Collections: @terror_exe Flash Fest





	Prescriber

**Author's Note:**

> ‘Thanks for seeing me after hours,’ Ned said right away, as soon as he was called into the doctor’s office. He had heard that it was always better to thank someone than apologise.

‘No trouble. Harry’s an old friend.’

Ned folded himself down into the little green chair, trying not to read the poster about stress and heart disease on the wall. ‘It’s just that the NHS waiting lists for a new GP are absolutely mad right now.’

‘Mm,’ said the doctor. He typed something and clicked his mouse, and the printer on his desk whirred to life. He typed a little more. Ned noticed that he had excellent posture under his crisp white shirt. The cuffs had real cufflinks in them. Finally, the doctor looked at Ned. ‘So, what seems to be the problem?’

‘The thing is,’ said Ned, his mouth very dry, ‘I think I might actually be dying.’

Doctor Stanley raised his thin, pale eyebrows. ‘Is that so?’

‘Yes, I mean—’ Ned rubbed at his chest. ‘I know I’m not literally dying, it’s just, it feels that way. I get up in the morning and the day just hits me, you know? And then I open my email and it’s neverending.’

‘Your email is killing you,’ said Stanley very crisply. Ned’s heart sank. It was seven in the evening, and a very well-respected London doctor in private practice was seeing him as a favour to a friend, and he had, he realised, complained about his _emails_ , which was—

‘Sorry, no, I mean. The emails are the symptom. Actually, the symptoms are chest pain and this totally crushing feeling like nothing will ever be okay, which objectively isn’t true but feels extremely true on a Sunday night.’ Ned rubbed his hands over his face. ‘Am I making sense?’

‘I think,’ said Stanley, ‘that you are under significant stress.’

‘Stress? Are there, er, are there tests for that?’

A ghost of a smile drifted across Stanley’s face. The smile took him from austere intellectual territory into the sort of condescending, paternal sadism that Ned was pathetically into. Stanley reached out and pressed two fingers against Ned’s throat, holding them there as he looked at his watch. It only compounded the issue.

‘Your resting pulse is in the nineties,’ he said. ‘What do you do for work?’

‘I’m in supply chain management,’ said Ned. ‘For Tesco.’ It occurred to him that a doctor making Harley Street money had probably never set foot inside a Tesco, and was also likely to be under significantly more stress than a middle-manager whose most pressing daily concerns pertained to the logistics of the frozen food section. He felt himself blushing under his beard.

‘Tesco, is it?’ said Stanley, with more emotion than he had yet expressed. ‘They do a rather good frozen haggis.’

‘Thanks,’ said Ned. _Frozen - Meat - Ethnic - Speciality,_ he thought automatically.

‘Son, my recommendation to you is to take some time off work. Get some exercise, go to Brighton for the weekend and walk along the beach. Smoker?’

‘No.’

‘Keep it that way. They say friends are helpful too. Partners. Emotional support.’

‘I’m single,’ said Ned mournfully.

‘I was going to suggest sex, but perhaps not, then.’

‘It would be nice,’ muttered Ned mutinously. He would like to have sex at least once more before his inevitable premature heart attack. This was clearly a bridge too far, because now Stanley had gone very quiet and was sitting in his fancy ergonomic chair, observing Ned like a lab specimen. Ned looked down at his own shoes: Clarks from four years ago. The cow for Stanley’s oxblood leather brogues probably hadn’t even been _born_ four years ago.

‘Where do you live?’

‘Catford?’ said Ned, the question taking him by surprise.

‘Zone three,’ Stanley said with some concern. ‘Good grief. Well, I suppose it’ll have to be my place.’

‘For what?’ Ned asked, just for confirmation.

‘Sex.’

‘Right,’ said Ned. ‘Exactly.’ It seemed futile to play hard to get. Ned wanted to be very easy to get; he was dying to be had, actually.

During the drive to Dr Stanley’s house in Dr Stanley’s BMW, Ned had ample time to worry that it was a bad idea. He had still more time to worry about, in no particular order: his breath, the likelihood that he had pit stains, how many emails he had accrued since leaving work at five, the odds that Stanley was some kind of murderer, the odds that he would throw Ned out directly afterwards or, worse, that it would be awkward in the morning (and that Ned had no toothbrush or clean underwear).

‘Here we are.’

It was a really nice house. Nice from the outside, and nice inside too in the way that only money and a good interior decorator could buy. Ned obediently kicked his shoes off, dropped his messenger bag, and followed Stanley up the stairs. There was a portrait at the top of a stuffy Victorian gentleman in a high-necked black coat who looked exactly like Stanley.

Stanley took a left into a luxuriously-appointed bathroom with a walk-in shower. The shower had a bench in it, presumably because when you could afford to live in a house like this, your water bill became irrelevant and you could lounge around horizontally under the spray.

‘Aren’t we going to the bedroom?’ Ned asked. He was out of his depth already.

‘I prefer to fuck in the shower,’ Stanley said, removing his tie and hanging it on the hook on the back of the door. ‘It’s more hygienic. Get undressed, would you?’

‘Right,’ said Ned, and shucked off his clothes into a crumpled polyester pile on the floor. He shuffled from foot to foot.

‘You’ve got a good body,’ said Stanley, looking him over. ‘Glad you haven’t fallen victim to this ridiculous waxing fad that’s overtaken most young men in this city.’ Stanley himself was weirdly hairless but for a thin stripe down the centre of his chest and a meagre thatch of almost-ginger pubes. As he watched Stanley turn the shower on, Ned wondered how many _young men in the city_ Stanley typically brought home.

Stanley beckoned him into the shower.

‘So, uh,’ Ned asked tentatively as they both soaped themselves, washing off the day, ‘what were you, uh, expecting?’

‘Nothing baroque,’ Stanley said. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘I’m not worried,’ replied Ned. This was the greatest lie ever told.

‘You seem like the worrying type.’

‘As long as you’re not sending me emails, I’m fine,’ Ned said, trying for humour. He was rewarded with Stanley’s thin, haughty smile again. His dick twitched at it. Stanley noticed, raised his eyebrows.

‘Is it just older men, or will any authority do for you?’

‘Um,’ said Ned, the soap sliding out of his hand and skittering away across the tiled floor.

‘I see. Understand that if you call me ‘daddy,’ I shall throw you out of my house.’ Stanley leaned out of the shower and fished in the drawer under the bathroom sink for a condom. He took Ned by the hips and turned him around. Then he nudged the back of Ned’s right knee until he put it up on the bench. Ned folded his arms against the wall and rested his forehead on them. This was the part that he was always good at. The part he couldn’t screw up by saying or doing the wrong thing.

‘Mostly, I just like getting fucked,’ he said, almost to himself.

‘Like a good boy,’ said Stanley, with a dry amusement that Ned could hear in his voice. Ned couldn’t answer. Stanley was pressing a finger into him, and the sound of the water and the rushing in Ned’s ears was blending together. He whimpered.

Some time later, when Ned regained the use of his brain cells, he realised that he hadn't thought about his job, his impending mortality, or the futility of life in an uncaring universe in over an hour.

* * *

The next Friday, Ned met Harry at the Anning Rooms. Harry was firmly of the opinion that free access to the members’ lounge was the biggest perk of working at the Natural History Museum, and the menu had recently gone through one of its seasonal changes. (‘Let’s do lunch tomorrow,’ he had texted Ned the night before. ‘I’m absolutely fascinated by the concept of the Morroccan prawns?’)

The prawns were long gone and Ned’s club sandwich reduced to lettuce and a toothpick, when Harry finally asked about his appointment with Stanley.

‘It was interesting,’ said Ned. ‘Illuminating, sort of.’

‘I’ve been friends with him a very long time,’ said Harry. He paused, diplomatically, because Harry was always diplomatic. ‘He’s a bit of a character, but his heart’s in the right place.’

‘His heart,’ repeated Ned weakly into his herbal tea. He was avoiding coffee at the moment. Caffeine made him anxious.

Harry stirred his coffee and fastidiously broke his little amaretti biscuit in half. ‘Yes, he’s a nice fellow, really, under the brusque exterior. Clearly whatever he recommended is doing the trick, you look much less stressed, Ned.’

Ned and Harry were close enough friends that Ned felt a duty to be truthful.

‘We had sex,’ he said very quickly into his tea.

‘Oh my gosh,’ said Harry in a shower of amaretti crumbs. ‘When I said I wanted you to know him I didn’t mean biblically— _why_ does everything always have to be about sex?’

‘You study sex,’ Ned pointed out.

‘I study the reproductive cycle of plants,’ Harry said primly.

‘Orchids are actually very sexual-looking plants, if you think about it.’

‘I don’t think about it. It’s disrespectful.’

‘How is it disrespectful to—’

‘Let’s get dessert,’ said Harry brightly. ‘Do you know, I think lavender-infused ice-cream sounds fun—do you think it’s purple?’

And that was the end of that conversation: Ned never let on to Harry that his prescription for stress relief was _ongoing_ , and Harry never brought it up again either.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, I have written three modern Terror AUs about dramatic London queens! If you liked this one, the others are [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26130931) and [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26130865).


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